


Tessellate

by calmlikesurrender



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, Smut, Tattoos, tesselate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-24 03:17:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calmlikesurrender/pseuds/calmlikesurrender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niall’s favorite nights are when he knows Zayn’s not going to leave after an hour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tessellate

Niall’s favorite nights are when he knows Zayn’s not going to leave after an hour.

            Because they have nights like that more often than he’d like to admit. Where Zayn calls him up after he and Harry get into a fight. Zayn tells him he’s outside and that he needs someone.

            “I’m here,” Niall always says, his mouth forcing the words out before his mind can be persuaded to see reason.

            And they fuck dirty and deep and Zayn’s gagging around him. Tears in his eyes, drips of slick perversion spilling from his lips. And give it an hour- hour and a half if Zayn leans back against the headboard and shakes his cigarettes out of his trouser pockets after. Regardless, it’s quick and Niall stares at him after, wondering how to tell him that he’s not this easy.  

            Except his dick’s still got Zayn’s spit on it, his lips still bruised and slick with lube from when he’d gone down on him after.

            But the nights he loves most are the nights like this. When it’s just the two of them past midnight, past the sun rising.

            They order in and pour until Niall’s giggling and Zayn’s flopping back on the bed in a daze, lip between his teeth, working down his fly.

            “Can I?” he asks, moaning when Niall steps out of his trousers, when he tugs his jumper over his chest.

            “What?”

            Niall’s vision’s blurring. Clearing up. Blurring again. He climbs up on the bed, and straddles Zayn’s thighs. Helps him get his jacket off. His shirt. His boxers. Messes his hair up until Zayn swats him away.

            “I want to.. Let me.”

            Zayn’s slurring, breathing deep, his hands coming up to the band of Niall’s boxers, slipping in.

             _These_  nights.

            Zayn giving himself over. Fixing mistakes.

 

            Niall lays over him after, their legs twisted together, the pock-marked feel of Zayn’s bare chest like satin.

            Niall wants to touch him everywhere. Wants to coax him open, spread him out again. But he settles down with his hand on Zayn’s arm, kisses down to his elbow, his wrist. Up again to the dozens of tattoos sketched out there.

A collage of memories, some regrets, some unforgettable. The splatters of color on the inside of his bicep. A half moon, a Hershey kiss. Two glass beads with shadows. A spool of thread.

            “This one?” Niall asks, pressing his finger to a tiny brown heart. It’s lopsided and faint, smudged to look like a blur of melted chocolate on the sickly white page of his skin, “What’s this one mean?”

            “I hurt someone,” Zayn says, “Or well, I let someone down. I took something that wasn’t mine.”

            “Are they all like that?”

            Zayn yawns, “Like what?” eyes closed. His breath smells like cigarettes still. Even with dinner and wine and the coffee ice cream they’d stolen from Zayn’s flat mate, pistachios sprinkled over the top.

            “Stories, I guess,” Niall says.

            He closes his eyes, lays his head down on Zayn’s chest. Takes these indulgent breaths like Zayn’s cancer is almost inviting.

            “I just fall in love with everyone,” Zayn murmurs, already half asleep, “I just- just lose myself..”

Niall wants to tell him that it’s okay. He doesn’t know what that’s like, but he understands feeling like there’s too much, needing to let it go. Except before he can form the words, Zayn’s breaths are slow and gentle and he’s out of time.

He settles in more between Zayn’s legs, wonders if it’d be too much to leave now.

But he won’t.

He’s a masochist and he’ll stay, wake up in time to have a mug of coffee with Zayn pressed up beside him. Then he will leave and Zayn will, too and he won’t say he’s going to see Harry, and Niall won’t ask.

But Zayn will gather his things and take the train an hour to the other side of the city, pull his coat closer around his neck when the Autumn wind tries to slip in.

He gets to Harry’s door, and knocks. Then rings the bell. Then calls.

“I’m outside,” his pulse pounding in his throat.

Harry answers the door in nothing but his boxers, this obscenely small scrap of fabric barely covering anything, skimming the tops of his thighs. He’s smiling, easy. Always so easy.

He crosses his arms over his chest. The pale strip of skin where his wedding band should be makes Zayn’s breath catch in his throat.

“Is everything alright?” Harry asks him.

Zayn swallows, “I just wanted to see you.”

“You were here yesterday.”

He clears his throat, “I wanted to see you again.”

They just watch each other for a moment then. Until Harry steps aside to let him in, smelling like soap and the dark musky bite of his cologne.

“Louis’ working late,” he says, and Zayn’s heart starts to beat so much faster.

“So we have all night?” he asks, heading straight for Harry and Louis’ bedroom.

Harry grabs his arm and pulls him toward the living room instead. He sets down and spreads his legs, prompts Zayn forward to straddle his thighs.

“We’ve got a few hours,” Harry says.

He makes it easy and quick, lets Zayn open himself up right there over Harry’s lap until he’s shaking. Harry doesn’t take his boxers off, just pulls them down enough to get his cock out, hold it at the base, tip right against Zayn’s hole.

“Come on,” Harry coaxes, “I know you need it,” and Zayn moans, sinking down on his cock, taking him in greedy and fast, gasping when it spreads him like nothing he’s ever known. It’s always like this with Harry. He always feels consumed and tainted. Like he’ll never be better than when he’s being dragged right up close.

“You’re going to take it, right?” Harry whispers when Zayn can finally get his breathing steady, then he’s riding him slow, trying to drag it out. Commit it to memory.

When Zayn goes in to kiss him, Harry pulls back a little.

“Don’t,” he says.

Then as if it was harsher than he intended, he runs his thumb over Zayn’s cheek. Kisses him there. Then the tip of his nose. These gentle little touches.

“You’re beautiful like this,” he tells him, “Louis never does this,” and Zayn hears everything between those words.  _I’m better than him. I’m_ more _than him_ he’s thinking, but then Harry gets this glossy look and starts whispering about how blue Louis’ eyes are. How dark and how strong he is, how his thighs look when he’s spread out. How he has these freckles across his nose, but he’s so tan you can only see them when his skin’s flushed and he’s trembling, pounding into Harry’s body trying to force himself not to come too easy.

Zayn wants to scream. But he just sinks down more. Fists into Harry’s hair, rocking against him, taking everything he can. As much as he can before it’s gone again like always. Harry groans and he’s shaking, biting down on Zayn’s neck, thrusting up into him.

 After Harry comes, he lifts Zayn off effortlessly like a doll. He runs his hand down between Zayn’s thighs, feeling how wet and open he is. Zayn groans. Harry pulls away.

He heads for the bathroom without saying a word, leaves Zayn there on the couch half dressed and shivering, still hard but he knows he won’t touch himself. Not unless Harry says it’s okay.

When he comes back, he’s in a new pair of boxers, and he’s smiling again. Always smiling.

“Louis shouldn’t be home until nine,” he says.

Zayn nods, “I- I miss you. Sometimes,” he says, feeling weak and loopy.

Harry’s eyes are trailing down Zayn’s neck.

“Alright,” he says, licking at his lip, “Yeah, okay.”

And by half eight, Zayn’s strung out and bruised and he thinks if Harry touches him again, it’ll just be too much. He’ll die right there. Cave into himself like a black hole.

Harry tells him there’s beer in the fridge and Zayn takes one, sips on his way home. Gets home and lies out on his bed. Falls asleep with his fingers flexing, remembering how they’d felt in Harry’s hair. How he’d sounded when he came. How he’d almost kissed him.

But then it’s three nights later and Zayn doesn’t remember what he took, but he feels like death if death was fast and like Heaven.

He knocks on Niall’s door and tells him he needs him.

“I had a rough night,” but he’s smiling, crying, “I feel like shit,” with this grip on Niall’s hips like a vice, dragging him out from his boxers.

He’s high and he’s shaking, and Niall should say no. He should, but he won’t. Can’t. Couldn’t. Ever.

Not when this first began, or when Zayn had cried that one night with Niall’s face between his legs. Or when he’d whispered Harry’s name hesitantly. Like he wanted to see if it made sense. Then came right then, when Niall was barely in, the head of his cock only nudging past the rim of his hole.

But now it’s after and they’re lying out on Niall’s bed, tangled up together, Niall touching Zayn’s chest. Fingers skimming over the dark ink there.

 The story never ends. Up his neck to the flushed line of his jaw bone, his cheeks. Caved in, hollowed out like tunnels of ice.

Instead of a blank, tan canvas like before, there’s a smatter of dots across the bridge of his nose now. Spilling over onto his cheeks. Little man-made freckles, these permanent blemishes like scars.

“You’d tattoo anything,” Niall laughs, trying to count them out one by one.  He loses count and starts again.

“How many do you have?” he asks finally with a frustrated huff.

Zayn looks almost ready to say something, but he shrugs instead, “No idea.”

“They’re just random?”

“No, they matter. They all matter,” he says, voice dipping, slowing down like it does when he’s trying to talk between the words, “They mean something.”


End file.
